Family Affair (Sly & the Family Stone song)

"Family Affair" is a 1971 number-one hit single recorded by Sly & the Family Stone

Sly & the Family Stone

Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music...

for the Epic Records

Epic Records

Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...

label. Their first new material since the double a-sided single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

"Thank You " is a 1969 hit single recorded by Sly and the Family Stone, recognized as one of the greatest and most influential funk songs of all time. The song, double a-sided with "Everybody Is a Star", reached number one on the soul single charts for five weeks, and reached number one on the...

"/ "Everybody is a Star

Everybody Is a Star

"Everybody Is a Star", released in December 1969, is a 1970 hit single recorded by Sly & the Family Stone. The song, double a-sided with "Thank You ", reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970 and was the final classic-era Family Stone recording...

" nearly two years prior, "Family Affair" became the fourth and final number-one pop hit for the band. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

magazine later ranked the song #138 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song version by John Legend

John Legend

John Roger Stephens , better known by his stage name John Legend, is an American singer, musician, and actor. He is the recipient of nine Grammy Awards, and in 2007, he received the special Starlight award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.Prior to the release of his debut album, Stephens' career...

, Joss Stone

Joss Stone

Jocelyn Eve Stoker , better known by her stage name Joss Stone, is an English soul singer-songwriter and actress. Stone rose to fame in late 2003 with her multi-platinum debut album, The Soul Sessions, which made the 2004 Mercury Prize shortlist...

, and Van Hunt

Van Hunt

Van Hunt is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. He released his debut album, Van Hunt, in 2004, and a follow-up, On the Jungle Floor, in 2006, both on Capitol Records...

, won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals

Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals

The Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal was awarded between 1970 and 2011. From 1967 to 1969 and in 1971 the award included instrumental performances...

at 49th Grammy Awards.

Overview

Released on November 6, 1971, "Family Affair" was markedly different from the earlier Sly & the Family Stone hits. "Family Affair" is a somber, Hohner

Hohner

Hohner Musikinstrumente GmbH & Co. KG is a company specialising in the manufacture of musical instruments. Founded in 1857 by Matthias Hohner , Hohner is identified especially with harmonicas and accordions. The Hohner company has invented and produced many different styles, and most of the...

Pianet

thumb|Hohner Pianet TThe Pianet was a series of electric pianos built by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany from the 1960s to the 1970s. The designer of the early Pianet models was Ernst Zacharias, basing the mechanism closely on a 1920s design by Lloyd Loar...

electric piano

Electric piano

An electric piano is an electric musical instrument.Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electrical signals by pickups. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. The earliest electric pianos were invented...

based record with a rhythm box (or drum machine

Drum machine

A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...

) providing the rhythm, making it the first number-one hit to feature a programmed rhythm track. Sly Stone

Sly Stone

Sly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of...

and his sister Rose

Rose Stone

Rose Stone is an African-American singer and keyboardist. She is best known as one of the lead singers in Sly & the Family Stone, a popular psychedelic soul/funk band founded by her brothers, Sly Stone and Freddie Stone...

sing lead on the song. The lyrics reflect the good and bad aspects of being family, with Sly delivering his part in a low funk-styled tone instead of his earlier gospel

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

-based shout, sounding off rhythm and off key. Sly's screams is a variation of a child crying.

"Family Affair" was the most successful hit of Sly & the Family Stone's career, peaking at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

for three weeks, while achieving the same on the Billboard R&B Singles chart

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

for five weeks. The band's long-awaited fifth album, There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On is the fifth studio album by American funk and soul band Sly & the Family Stone, released November 20, 1971 on Epic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place primarily throughout 1970 to 1971 at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California...

, debuted at number one on the Billboard album charts during the same period. There's a Riot Goin' On was typified by a deep, dark style of funk, evident in "Family Affair", that earned the album a place as one of the most influential albums of all time.

Partially recorded in a Winnebago

Winnebago Industries

Winnebago Industries Inc., , is a manufacturer of motor homes, a type of recreational vehicle or RV, in the United States. It is based in Forest City, Iowa.-Corporate history:...

, Sly Stone did not utilize the Family Stone for this recording, with the exception of his sister Rose. His friends Billy Preston

Billy Preston

William Everett "Billy" Preston was a musician who gained notoriety and fame, first as a session musician for the likes of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and The Beatles, and later finding fame as a solo artist with hits such as "Space Race", "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from...

and Bobby Womack

Bobby Womack

Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack is an American singer-songwriter and musician. An active recording artist since the early 1960s where he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group The Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career has spanned more than 40...

played the keyboard and guitar lines, respectively, for the song, with Sly playing the bass and programming the rhythm box.

According to the biography Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, Sly Stone felt that this song wasn't strong enough to be released as a single. His manager and Epic Records had to convince him otherwise.

Notable covers and derivative recordings

"Family Affair" has been heavily covered, with versions by Tyrone Davis

Tyrone Davis

Tyrone Davis , born Tyrone Fettson, was a leading American soul singer with a distinctive style, recording a long list of hit records over a period of more than 20 years. He had three no...

, The Brothers Johnson, MFSB

MFSB

MFSB was a pool of more than thirty studio musicians based at Philadelphia’s famed Sigma Sound Studios. They worked closely with the production team of Gamble and Huff and producer/arranger Thom Bell, and backed up such groups as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the O’Jays, the Stylistics, the...

, Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...

, Bunny Wailer

Bunny Wailer

Bunny Wailer, , also known as Bunny Livingston and affectionately as Jah B, is a singer songwriter and percussionist and was an original member of reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh...

, and many more. The song's drum machine-created rhythm was duplicated in several early to mid-1970s recordings, in particular The Temptations

The Temptations

The Temptations is an American vocal group having achieved fame as one of the most successful acts to record for Motown Records. The group's repertoire has included, at various times during its five-decade career, R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, and adult contemporary music.Formed in Detroit,...

' "Let Your Hair Down" (1973), and Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...

's "You Haven't Done Nothin'

You Haven't Done Nothin'

"You Haven't Done Nothin" is a 1974 funk single by Stevie Wonder featuring background vocals from The Jackson 5, taken from the album Fulfillingness' First Finale. The politically aware song became Wonder's fourth number-one pop hit, his tenth number one soul hit, and was one of his angriest...

" (1974).

A rap-infused, danceable cover was released by German Milli Vanilli

Milli Vanilli

Milli Vanilli was a pop/dance music project formed by Frank Farian in Germany in 1988, visually fronted by Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. The group's debut album achieved international success and earned them a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on Feb. 21, 1990. Milli Vanilli became one of the most...

spinoff band Try 'N' B in 1992. Another retooled cover was done in 1993 by Shabba Ranks

Shabba Ranks

Shabba Ranks is a Jamaican dancehall musician.He was one of the most popular dancehall artists of his generation. He was also one of the first Jamaican deejays to gain worldwide acceptance, and recognition for his 'slack' lyrical expressions and content, when "ridin' di riddim"...

featuring Patra

Patra (singer)

Patra is a reggae singer. In her beginnings as a Female Dancehall deejay in the late 1980s, she used the stage name, Lady Patra...

and Terri & Monica

Terri & Monica

Terri & Monica was a R&B duo from the early 1990s which featured Terri Robinson and Monica Payne, who were members of the short-lived late 80s New Jack Swing R&B group The Gyrlz. They released a pair of full-length recordings, 1993's Systa and 1996's Suga, both released via Epic Records...

as a single for the Addams Family Values
Addams Family Values
Addams Family Values is a 1993 sequel to the 1991 comedy The Addams Family. The film was written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and many cast members from the original returned for the sequel, including Raúl Juliá, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci...

soundtrack. This version charted on the Billboard pop chart at number 84, number 16 on the R&B chart, and number-six on the Hot Rap Tracks

Hot Rap Tracks

Rap Songs is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States. It lists the 25 most popular hip-hop/rap songs, calculated weekly by airplay on rhythmic and urban radio stations and sales in hip hop-focused or exclusive markets. From 1989 through 2001, it was based on how much the single...

chart. Madonna

Madonna (entertainer)

Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

featured this song as an intro to "Keep It Together" on her Blond Ambition Tour

Blond Ambition Tour

The Blond Ambition World Tour was the third concert tour by American singer-songwriter, Madonna. The tour was launched in support of her fourth studio album, Like a Prayer, and the soundtrack, I'm Breathless. The tour reached North America, Europe and Asia. It was a highly controversial tour,...

in 1990. Prince samples the song on his track 'Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This?'

Janet Jackson

Janet Jackson

Janet Damita Jo Jackson is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years...

sampled the song for her hit b-side, "And On And On," in 1994.

The Black Eyed Peas

The Black Eyed Peas

The Black Eyed Peas are an American pop group , formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1995. The group includes rappers will.i.am, apl.de.ap, and Taboo, and singer Fergie. Since the release of their third album Elephunk in 2003, the group has sold an estimated 56 million records worldwide...

song "Weekends

Weekends (Black Eyed Peas song)

"Weekends" is the first single taken from American hip-hop group The Black Eyed Peas' second studio album, Bridging the Gap. The song features vocals from Esthero.-Background:...

" from their 2000 album Bridging the Gap samples "Family Affair".

In 2005, John Legend